St. Julie's Church

In order to make sure that we are able to find our way to the JR station on Sunday, we cycled to the station on last Friday, just to confirm our route. Otherwise we might be wasting time seeking our way to the station and be late for mass then. We used another way to downtown, as it's a rather hilly all the way from our home if we were to use the straight road from the university. So we used the further but smoother way, and we managed to reach our destination in 45 minutes. Riding to downtown is not that tiring, it's a bit going downhill. In another hand, going back is more tiring.

Another purpose is to confirm where is the parking lot for bicycle as Prof Okuda mentioned we cannot simply park our bike, there's a special parking space for our bike. We found it indeed, and it cost 100 yen to park for whole day. It's a bit dark inside, but you can still see that there's 2 levels for the bike. This actually doubled up the spaces for parking. I believe there are thousands of bicycle inside.

Our second visit to Higashihiroshima Church, I would say it's quite a different experience than the first time we went there.

This week it's a different priest celebrating mass, and followed by the usual alter server, then we have 3 cute little alter boys following behind. But after that I only realised that they are not alter boys but that it is their first holy communion that day.

There were several parishioners snapping photos, so I dare to take photos during mass then. But i wasn't at a strategic seat, so I didn't take a good picture. The whole atmosphere was joyful and warmth, everyone is happy to see the boys receiving their first holy communion.

Again everything is in Japanese, but this time I found a booklet which has the liturgy of the mass in English version, with the Japanese language and the pronounciation of the Japanese on different columns. There's another alien language which I don't know. We can read the pronounciation while we know what is going on too. This make things much easier for us.

This time I remembered to capture photos of the cushions, though I didn't manage to take much of them. ;)

After mass as we were about to leave, a sister grabbed me to join their 'tea time', then only we realised that they have this chit chat time after mass every week. Suddenly I missed the supper time after mass in St. Anne's Chapel.

We had a pleasant time, they served tea and coffee, together with some cookies and chocolate sweets. At first we had a chit chat with the priest, Father Jerri, who is actually from Indonesia. He had been in Japan for 8years already and so he can express in Japanese fluently. After that we also meet a few parishioners who can speak english well.

We get to know that there's shortage of priest in Japan, so they do not have a parish priest stationed in this church. So they have different priests take turns to celebrate mass every week. Also, actually this church is named after St. Julie, not Higashihiroshima Catholic Church as we thought before this.

It is not impossible for us to attend mass at the cathedral in Hiroshima City. We can go there by taking the JR train, just different direction and it's further. There's English mass in cathedral on Sundays at 2.30pm. So maybe we could try it some time.

I love the cookies, and I love to capture the moments of joy and love like this.